SYRIA: Open House

The Syrian government, which for weeks virtually cut off all communications with the outside world, and in its heavily censored press permitted only the official Russian version on Hungary to be printed, suddenly flung wide its doors to the West last week. For U.S. reporters who have been trying ever since the Suez invasion to find out who is running Syria, portly President Shukri el Kuwatly, 65, held genial open house. The reversal reflected Syrian concern over Western journalistic coverage, much of it highly exaggerated, of a Soviet take-over in Syria.

U.S. correspondents in Damascus watched some 3,000 Syrian volunteers parade with oily new Czech-made Tommy guns, and had a look at artillery and tanks newly arrived from Soviet-bloc countries. The Syrian army chief firmly denied that Soviet-type planes had arrived recently in Syria. Syria, an economically sound if politically unhealthy nation, is getting arms cut-rate from Russia, and paying out of current funds. Unlike Nasser’s Egypt, which has mortgaged perhaps half of its cotton crop to pay for Communist arms, Syria is in little danger of having its exports cornered by the Russians (Syria’s trade with the Soviet bloc was only 1 ½% of its total last year).

Buttering Up. Relaxed and good-humored in his brocade-hung palace reception room, President Kuwatly praised Eisenhower’s intervention over Suez—though the Syrian press has steadily thanked Russia for bringing a Middle East ceasefire. Said Kuwatly to TIME Correspondent John Mecklin: “Syria was always friendly to the U.S. except during the bad times of Mr. Truman.” Kuwatly recalled that just after World War I, Syrians had asked for U.S. in preference to French mandate rule, and he brought up a familiar subject: “All our trouble with you has been the fruit of the Jews.”

What would Syria think of an Israeli settlement now? “If Chicago had been occupied by people from all over the world—Filipinos, Russians, Australians, all gathered together for religion—and they were holding the door open to unlimited immigration and you could see Chicago growing to a population of 10 million, what would you do? Exchange ambassadors and shake hands?”

Kuwatly scoffed at stories that the mysterious Colonel Abdel Hamid Serraj, 31, chief of army intelligence, is actually boss of the army and the government. “I’ve been a politician 45 years. I’m free, as President, to give orders to anyone I want. I’m prisoner of nobody. As for the colonels in our army, they do what they’re told.” But if beaver-busy Serraj does not run the country, his political seniors cannot run it without him, either. Said big, bald Prime Minister Sabri el Assali: “We are in complete agreement—President, government, people, army.”

Assali also blamed the U.S. for the existence of Israel, and added: “There’s an

Arab proverb: ‘He who takes a donkey up the stairs of a minaret must then get it down again.’ ” The Premier said that the U.S. call for a cease-fire in Egypt had “instilled in my heart a hope for real peace. But when I heard of Bulganin’s warning to the aggressors, I had conflicting feelings. On the one hand, I was glad, as an Arab nationalist, that this might end the atrocities in Egypt. On the other, I feared that this could lead to world war.”

Simmering Down. Washington heard these friendly assurances from Syria with some skepticism. One report in Beirut attributed the new Syrian solicitude for the U.S. to private messages from Nasser to both Kuwatly and Jordan’s King Hussein, asking them to lay off cozying up to the Russians, at least for the time being, because it would irritate the U.S.—”which has been most helpful to the Arab cause.” Whatever the motive, the Syrian camaraderie was one of several signs that the crisis in the Middle East may be simmering down. Iraq decided to pull back the troops it had sent into Jordan when Israel invaded Egypt (it needs them at home to keep Premier Nuries-Said’s pro-Western regime in power). Radio Moscow announced that the British, French and Israeli pledges to withdraw from Nasser’s territory “naturally cancel the question of dispatching Soviet volunteers to Egypt.”

The Middle East’s hatreds and feuds remained. Demanding the “removing” of Israel from the region, Iraq’s Fadhil Jamali, whose country quarrels bitterly with Egypt, told the U.N. Assembly last week: “When it comes to the Palestine question, all the Arab world is Egypt, and all Arab statesmen are Nassers.”